Month: November 2010

Well, NaNoWriMo is almost at an end, and I am most definitely not going to be a winner, hovering as I am at barely more than twelve-thousand words. I made what I now realize is a classic NaNo mistake: I got way too invested in the project. As I noted in my warm-up short story, I have a tendency to labour over every piece of prose, which is something I rather enjoy doing but not a habit that jives well with writing 1,667 words a day.

That being said, I am quite absorbed in my work so far and I have no intention of stopping. In part I’ll be relying on the readers here at Stranger Than Truth to keep me motivated: your eyeballs and your feedback are much appreciated. Tomorrow I’ll be back here on the blog with a recap of what we’ve all done during NaNoWriMo, and a look at some of our plans moving forward. Until then, please enjoy the next unedited slice of my ongoing novel!

(If you missed the beginning, read that first. Otherwise this will be even more confusing than it already is.)

It’s late in the day, November 27th, 2010 (Editor’s Note: Apologies for the late posting). My word count sits at 30,000ish, and I’m okay with that. This was my first NaNoWriMo. I had a lot of fun with it, but when it comes right down to it I didn’t make this the priority I said I would at the start of the month.

My work is more important to me than getting to 50,000 words in 30 days. When my job required 10- and 12-hour days, I put in those hours gladly. I got the results I needed, and that means more to me than this particular story.

My personal life is more important to me than this project, and when that demanded my evenings, I never gave a second thought to dedicating my time towards that too.

Finally, my leisure time took priority. That was my great failing on this particular NaNoWriMo: When my work and personal life took its toll on my creativity, I came home and vegitated. I needed to unwind. I didn’t get into the headspace to write, and my faltering attempts on those days of recuperation resulted in 500 or 600 words of gibberish and dreck that I would never dream of sharing with the world. Continue reading “Update from Face In The Blue: This is the End”

So with a few days left in an hour of fitful I’m-ready-to-sleep-but-can’t, I was narrating in my mind a scene from my proposed story. Finally learning from all the times of not wanting to move from the bed to later not even realizing I had even forgotten the ideas I had the night before, I got up and typed it out.

Though I’m the only one who knows at this point what the hell is happening in my story, I’m wary about posting too big of a description of the characters and plot in support of such a small sample. But for reader’s sake, the two characters we have here are; Kshar, who had previously died but only long enough to form a slight connection with the parallel, shadowy equivalent to this world’s equivalent to “hell” or “the underworld”, leaving him a Warden, an enigmatic, near-dead order who hunt those who are tied to that shadow world (think Luke Skywalker using the dark side to fight Darth Vader); Solana, a witch of sorts who has fey powers that stem from the OTHER parallel realm called the Sidhe, who met Kshar when her, essentially, gypsy caravan was attacked by; Templars, agents of the pseudo-theocratic setting, can use some influence over the energies of the Shadowfell. Outside of their public roles as magistrates, one of their primary concerns is the disposal of apostates (any non-templars who use “magic”). They have the judicial, ceremonial, and war-time feel of Feudal knights mixed with Christian witch-hunters and, I don’t know, necromancy I suppose. Yeah, that is a lot of explanation for what takes about 20 seconds in my story… Continue reading “Only in the lowest light could it be called a nose”

I’ve been trying to focus on writing lately so I’ve been neglecting the blog, so i thought I’d just give everyone a quick update on how the iPhone challenge is going and talk about the WriteRoom iOS app I’ve been using.

First of all, the iPhone challenge. I am loving this. Wherever I go I can work on my NaNo, whether I’m walking down the street, on the subway, at the office, having dinner, or out at the bar. Whenever I get an idea I can get it down and do some writing (ideas seem to be hard to come by lately, so if I get one it’s great that I can write it down before I forget). Continue reading “iPhone Challenge update & Review of the WriteRoom app”

The fourth chapter I dislike for its lack of a character piece. It is as difficult as it sounds to cover six thousand years in five thousand words and still have meaningful character development. In the end, I just had to make it my narrator’s story. I hope there is some human emotion and empathy towards the end, but I can’t be sure.

For the remainder of the month, I need to work very, very hard on this. Fortunately, I believe that is in the cards. I will also be travelling on the 28th, 29th, and 30th to Calgary for work, so hopefully there will be a lot of time in airports and planes and hotels to make the final sprint to the finish line.Continue reading “Life Loves Death, Chapter Four (Unedited First Draft)”

That can’t even be considered a number really. It’s sort of like a un-number. It’s like how white isn’t a colour because it’s the absence of colour. There you go, zero is a shade.

It’s also what my word count is still sitting at.

Not that I was expecting to have some brilliant blue or verdant green all over my page. Shit brown more like. I would have even settled for a little bit of grey (sure it’s a shade too, but it feels a little more substantial at least).

Long story short (writer’s competition joke), work’s been crazy busy. As if getting ready to moving offices, stocking all our retailers with holiday level stock on our subway buttons, and getting a promotion to Associate Editor wasn’t enough, we’re getting in to crunch time on our new Winter-themed issue. At least my creative flair — or general Bulkoness, I’m not sure — has been seeping in to my article on the hidden grossness of winter in the city. I’m pretty much painting it as the season most akin to repeat-offending ambush rapists.

Though I’ve yet to put pen to paper, my mind has at least been going over the details of what would have been my NaNoWriMo piece. I’ve been thinking of how to avoid certain pitfalls common the genre and just fine tuning specific that I was previously unsure about. So although it’s been a No-word-vember for me, at least I have an extra month’s worth of forethought for my story.

And if you really need to see what Bulko has to say, wait for the new issue of Spacing. I say “Ninja Turtle farts” in it.

Here’s the unedited continuation of my story so far. I’m not as far along as I would like to be, I’m afraid. I’m currently at 26,000ish words. I’m hoping to pick up steam now that my story has passed from pre-history into recorded history after these two new chapters have elapsed.

I have a couple of observations about this update. I am disappointed in the tone and tenor of Chapter Three, as I now need to build forward several other encounters between my narrator and the backpacker off of this rather flat beginning. I had hoped to ‘get it in editing’ without really editing, but a couple of cursory passes have convinced me I’m not going to get it right without taking the whole thing apart and starting over, and my quest for 50,000 words in 30 days has been hampered enough by recent events at work and within my personal life. I cannot justify scrapping a couple of thousand right now for the sake of tone.

I seem to have fallen behind on the Nanowrimo track; I’m at 19000 words and should be at 26000 or so. But that’s ok. I turned off my creativity for a few days to concentrate on being lazy for the weekend. I also started reading Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami and finally watched David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. The latter has inspired me to delve into some serious melodrama. I’m talking about pulpy forbidden love, with lingering gazes and amazing one-liners. I’m already bringing out the red lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Too bad none of my characters have Southern accents…

But before I get to that, I’ll share this fragment with you (it’s not very good, don’t judge me). In this chapter, Sabine is meeting the mysterious “Emma” at an awful bar in the east-end. Yes, my hatred for the east-end is palpable. I find that area absolutely horrifying and refuse to walk around there after nightfall. Sabine apparently met Emma during the night that she can’t remember, but the circumstances are…mysterious. Hope you don’t mind it! Continue reading “Falling Behind…”

Editor’s Note: After a long silence, editor Trent Yardles has sent us the latest sampling of his anthology-in-progress, Dear Fiend: The Letters of Stoves & Yumyum. In this installment, the good bastard Stoves has sent a letter to Tasty Yumyum that strives for oneuppance but instead only betrays the state of his own affairs. Mr. Yardles has included a newspaper excerpt for context.

For even deeper context, you might want to check out installments one, two and three of Dear Fiend.